Johny Fernandez: I'm at the Javits Center, the largest
convention hall in all of New York City. It was supposed to
host the LendIt Fintech Conference earlier this year,
but the pandemic of 2020 had different plans. The Javits
Center right behind me was transformed into a temporary
hospital that would treat patients with non COVID related
illnesses. That was back in April and that lasted for about
a month. But the restrictions for large mass gatherings are
still in place, making events like LendIt FinTech seek out
alternatives. This year, Lendit Fintech has gone virtual.
Viewers may recall conference co-founder and CEO Bo Brustkern
aggressively marketing it in the weeks leading up to the event
that actually took place this week. The company originally
appeared to be defensive about overcharging a hefty price tag
for what was presumed to be a series of Zoom panels. Brustkern
made his case for why this would be different in ads peppered
across social media.
Bo Brustkern: Your job is too important to waste time on a
virtual conference with garbage content and surface level
networking. Believe me, I get it. Lendit Fintech USA isn't
like all that free Zoom garbage out there.
Johny Fernandez: It should be noted that the last time LendIt
Fintech held an event here at the Javits Center was back in
2017. And it drew in nearly 5,000 people. Now that number dropped
to nearly 4,000 people back in 2019, when it held an event in
San Francisco. LendIt was marketing the in-person event
that had been planned for this year and it was hoping to hit
that same figure of 4,000 people. But then the format changed. A
virtual event accessible from anywhere in the world could
potentially open the doors for a much larger audience. But it
doesn't always work out that way. When we logged into the
LendIt virtual event platform on its opening day, there appeared
to be less than 1200 attendees, a steep drop off. Despite this,
a sample of attendees surveyed by deBanked reported back that
they had been provided a valuable networking experience,
good content, and a cool newscast like feel when the
co-founders were live on camera. The Javits Center is back open
but for limited use, for example, its broadcast studio
can still be rented out. But if you're looking for a hall full
of fintech fans, you're gonna want to go online for that.
That's the latest here from Manhattan's West Side. I'm
Johny Fernandez with deBanked news. Sean, we're gonna send it
back over to you in the studio.
Sean Murray: Thanks, Johny. Believe it or not right behind
me here on the screen is the actual Lendit Fintech virtual
event happening in real time. This is not a screen recording.
In fact, right now, what we're looking at is the screen they
show you in between sessions, which is why we're doing the
broadcast right now, because we don't want to miss any of the
content that they're putting out there. And I will say that I was
at the Javits Center back in 2017 for that LendIt event, and
you mentioned something about the crowds having gotten just a
little bit smaller over time. I think that's really due to the
industry getting more mature, more sustainable and weeding out
a lot of the bad ideas. I will add that the LendIt co-founders
reported that networking was so active on the first day of the
virtual event that they logged a total of 2,171 meetings booked
on the platform. One attendee told me that he actually
conducted more than 25 virtual meetings on the first day. But
it's not just fintech people who are adopting the digital
experience. 2020 has been the year that consumers and business
owners have had to as well. They've had no choice. So today,
our guests are Raf and Vlad from a company called Smarter Loans,
based in Toronto, Canada, who have been following the rapid
expansion of fintech, but also the digital adoption of the
modern era,
Rafael: We're definitely seeing a shift towards more digital
products and digital behavior in the financial space and outside
of it as well. So we definitely anticipate an increase in users,
you know, engaging with brands that are able to offer a digital
experience, right, we're seeing that across a variety of
different industries, you know, whether it's personal loans, the
automotive sector, or the business side of things as well.
Consumers that are aren't able to go into a retail environment
now are gravitating towards digital. And that's a trend that
we're you know, hoping to see in 2020 as well.
Vlad: And overall, I mean, when you look at COVID, and the
result that it's had on different activities in
different sectors, ecommerce has been on the rise, right. And not
just for everyday household items that maybe we go to Amazon
to buy, but also for financial products. And that behavior
change has- is something that we noticed in our previous studies
into 2019 and even in 2018. But that behavior change has been
given a jolt. So we're expecting that even if there's an economic
slowdown, that this shift in consumer behavior will actually
continue long beyond and we're starting to see that already.
And and one way that we've been impacted is that we've been a
leader in loans in quite some time, but even for our existing
customers we've started to expand our service offering to
them and starting telling them about additional options for
financial products that they can obtain digitally and whether
that can be everyday banking solutions like checking and
savings accounts, or insurance services, or investing, money
transfers, and so on and so forth.
Sean Murray: Thank you guys. As you can tell, we're about to
head back into Lendit Fintech Virtual. I'll see you next time.
I'm Sean Murray.